Today, my vehicle's transmission shifter moves freely without shifting gears. I'm stuck in park, in a parking lot, unable to even put it into neutral to push the vehicle out of the way of several parked cars. The old lady screaming at me just outside my door doesn't understand logic either. FML

OP here. A little backstory... The vehicle I was driving is my work vehicle- a professional carpet cleaning van. I had driven the van to a job, realized there were no available parking spots to back it into and was thus forced to park it in the street and blocking two vehicles. I pulled the cleaning hoses and supplies to clean the apartment, finished the job, wrapped up and got back into the van. Only then when I shifted to 'drive' did the problem make itself known. Yes, it is an automatic. Not sure as to what was happening mechanically, I called our company's mechanic and it took him over an hour to get to me with the necessary part- a tiny little pin that pulls the shifter between gears and only takes a few minutes to replace without having to take it to a dealership or repair shop.
So, in that hour long wait, an old lady came out to drive her vehicle to a store. As luck would have it, her vehicle was one of two that my van was blocking. She asked me to move the van, to which I replied that I couldn't as it was stuck in park. I explained I couldn't even shift it to neutral to push the vehicle out of the way. I explained I was waiting on someone to come help me. That made her day, and she started screaming at me for several minutes. Logic has failed to defuse the situation and since I am not a Vulcan and cannot sleep hold a bitch, I, treasuring the security of this job to provide for my family, chose to then get back into my van, roll up the window, and said "Fuck it. Time to FML." She left to go back inside after a few minutes. About 20 minutes later, the mechanic showed up, fixed my van, and I was back up and running to finish the day's work.

If this has just started happening, as in whilst in the car then that's just really bad luck, but if you've been driving around with it like this for some time then you deserve it because it sounds like the car shouldn't be on the road.

If this has just started happening, as in whilst in the car then that's just really bad luck, but if you've been driving around with it like this for some time then you deserve it because it sounds like the car shouldn't be on the road.

This happened to me randomly on my old car. The screw inside the shifter had broken off and I was stuck in reverse after i had backed out into the road. It was probably completely out of the blue so I'd say OP definitely doesn't deserve it. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

This isn't a transmission problem. It's a shifter problem. And a sucky (but usually not god awfully expensive) fix. It just happened to my sister's car. She was on her way back from an hour's long highway trip, stopped for gas and nope. Not going anywhere. My husband's a mechanic and fixed it for her.

depending on the car, if you can get under it, look for were the linkage hooks up to the transmission. sometimes the clip that holds it on breaks. if so you can move it manually. engine off of course. then start it, put it in gear and go .if all looks good. looks like a transmission repair. also check out the trans fluid. first.

Whoever is yelling should be invited to have a go at moving it. And to whoever said push the clutch in - in a manual car, which gear do you suppose OP refers to as 'park'? Pretty sure it's an automatic transmission...